I was recently contacted by an agency I’ve worked with on numerous projects. Their client had disappeared mid-project and had been in touch to ask about some tweaks on their new site.

Confused, the agency checked out the client’s site. The client had outsourced the completion of the work elsewhere, ripping off the design we had created. Not only this, but the client didn’t want to pay for the work as they hadn’t used it.

Without getting into the rights or wrongs of the client’s behaviour, it surprised me that the agency’s contract didn’t include clauses that protected them. The contract I use, based on Andy Clarke’s Contract Killer, has a couple of sections that would have strengthened this agency’s position.

Let’s look at the two clauses that could have prevented this happening.

If you think about it, it’s incredible to consider how many websites are entirely black and white. It’s even more startling when you put that another way: when a site only uses white, grey and black, it has no colour at all.

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a Facebook advert that was offering access to a range of premium WordPress themes and plugins for $10-$20 per month. Out of curiosity I followed the link and had a browse around the website. The site features an extensive database of well-known premium themes/plugins that were all included as part of the subscription packages on offer.

When you bear in mind that a premium WordPress theme license can be around $70 per website, and premium plugins are anything between $10-$100 each, what's being offered on this site sounds like a rather good deal. This is especially true for users who are building their own websites and can't pass the costs on to clients. So, is it too good to be true? Unsurprisingly, the answer is almost definitely ‘yes’.

As a musician living and working in the 21st century, at some point you‘re going to have to use social media to promote your music, a gig, your band, or all of these in some combination. Universities and music colleges are slowly catching up in their provision of education in these areas, but in some cases the advice on offer barely stretches to ‘use social media to promote your music’. Not helpful.

There’s lots of social media advice freely available on the web, but this can be quite vague at times and is often aimed at businesses, so it may not feel entirely relevant. So, where do you start? Here's a brief, non-exhaustive, musician’s guide to Twitter and specific tips on how to use it to promote your music in an effective way.

What is your budget? During the initial discussions around a new project, this is often one of the first questions that a client will be asked. This can seem to be somewhat of an invasive question a first glance, but there are perfectly good reasons to be clear about this upfront.